Baby Barracks III: Did I mention that my kid loves daycare?

Yesterday was my first day back at work after maternity leave. It was also Daniel’s third day of daycare. Although, as you know from previous posts, his first day of daycare was not a rousing success his second and third days have been great (nothing short of shocking, in fact!). My child clearly loves daycare.

When I pick him up from the barracks he does not even care that I am there. He gives me a big grin, but continues doing whatever it was he was doing (playing, attacking other kids, watching events around him with great interest). When I hold him while catching up on the day's events from the caregivers, he will go back to them if they put their arms out. In other words ,after 30 seconds with Ma who he hasn’t seen all day, he’s happy to go back to the ladies he has been with all day.

I have to confess that this is all a little upsetting, but one million times preferable to him hating it and having a cryfest every day. I love the fact that he is happy there but feel like I am replaceable on some level. It’s humbling.



My concerns with the baby barracks so far are few because the main things - he’s happy, he eats a TON for them, and is capable of napping there – are taken care of. The language barrier issue has caused a few minor problems in that some staff don’t seem to understand my explanations about Daniel’s lunch (i.e. he can’t eat a whole chunk of cheese at once, so cut it into small pieces; formula bottles at naptime only, apple pieces in his feed bag, not on their own ). However, humbling again because maybe he functions just fine outside my way of doing things! Also, yesterday my child reeked of poop when I picked him up. He was well due for a diaper change, so I was not too impressed by that. Small potatoes in the big scheme of things, though.

As for my first day of work – stressful and anticlimactic.

On my way to work I killed a magpie. Again as some of you can appreciate, as a new driver and devout animal lover I almost lost my mind. The bird flew into traffic and was panicking between two cars and then flew right into my windshield (I was on the freeway clocking about 110). There is a small ding on the windshield but no other car damage and I was happy that when put to the test I was able to make the split-second decision to kill the bird rather than swerve and potentially cause an accident. Still, as someone who can’t help believing in omens and portents of doom, I was/am very rattled!!

Work itself was one big long meeting with work and file folders piled about two feet high on my desk. I was not even given time to arrange my desk and workspace. There appears to be no time to get my feet wet again or anything. Also, we are short-staffed a bit which means no one was available to go to lunch with me when I had my lunch hour. It kind of sucked! I’m just back like I’ve never even been gone! So, daycare, work, this whole lot of things that I thought would entail this feeling of massive change has actually been kind of mundane. The only real profound difference is that I was totally exhausted at about 9pm last night after a full day of work followed by three intense hours of Daniel, making supper and doing dishes. Exciting or what?!